The FCC’s National Broadband Plan, originally set for release in February 2010 until the FCC requested an extension to mid-March, could be the next big business battleground. It could also increase the number of local battlegrounds, as residents fight carriers at city halls over attempts to install more cell sites for FCC-backed wireless broadband.

Generic issues from the banking crisis and the health care financing crisis are pertinent to the debate over the future of broadband:

How can decades of complicated regulations be efficient and consistent with new technologies and delivery methods?

What is government’s appropriate role in pricing and guaranteeing access?

“the Mobile Future Auction is a win-win proposal: for broadcasters, who win more flexibility to pursue business models to serve their local communities; and for the public, which wins more innovation in mobile broadband services, continued free, over-the-air television, and the benefits of the proceeds of new and substantial auction revenues.”

TV broadcasters, and many members of the public, don’t see it quite that way, as the article goes on to point out.

Other links under the Sunroom Desk paperweight on the FCC Broadband Plan:

Government is the worst virus of all, now trying to worm it’s way into the internet. We need a firewall to keep the government out of our lives. Actually our Constitution was enacted to act as a firewall, we just haven’t had the sense to use it regularly to scan all government actions. It’s time we do before the country crashes.